Thank you everyone for your comments and thoughtful suggestions!
There’s a lot of great stuff here and I really appreciate the input, it’s all very helpful. There’s a lot to respond to so I’ll try to address the points that were raised.
Cooking/Meals
I’m good with cooking on a day-to-day basis, but don’t do quite as well with meal planning and I have little experience with freezing meals. The extent of my meal planning and freezing is essentially limited to cooking a large amount of meat and then using it in different dishes and/or freezing 1lb portions. I’ll buy more meat when it’s on sale and freeze some, otherwise our freezer is mostly stocked with fruit/veggies and occasionally frozen pizzas or one-bag frozen dinners if we’re ever particularly unmotivated.
We have an average sized refrigerator with a top freezer. From all the feedback it sounds like it would be worth acquiring (probably Craigslist) a small chest freezer, and once things start to settle down either unplug it, sell it, or continue to use it with my newfound menu planning/freezing skills.
I like the idea about having conveniently located snacks, I’m sure that she would appreciate that.
Pregnancy Prep
We’ve been following the week-by-week developments together on The Bump. We’re signed up for a few pregnancy classes and a tour of the birth center in September/October. (Bonus: the classes are reimbursed through work.)
We nabbed a decent crib/dresser/changing table set on Craigslist and we’re keeping an eye out for a stroller, car seat, and rocker as well as baby sales/giveaways on Facebook.
We have a daycare spot reserved with the program through our church, we know the people and it seems like a good setup, and is still in the average cost range ($1,430/month), and the location is mostly on the way to work. Once the baby is past 18 months, there would be the possibility getting part-time day care costs, but it’s not a guarantee.
She wants to breastfeed, and is aware that difficulties can happen. I’ll bring up the lactation consultant as something to get into now, prior to delivery.
We also need to establish a will.
Pregnancy Support/Tribe
There are a few couples with kids from church that we’re friends with that we can get support from, contact with them has been spotty over the summer with others being on vacation and us being at the in-laws most weekends. This should pick up again after summer. We also recently met one of our neighbors a couple houses down who is a SAHM with 2 young kids, she’s approachable and seemed genuinely willing to talk/hangout/etc.
My parents are 30 minutes away; they have expressed interest in helping leading up to and after the delivery, but also don’t want to be overbearing. At the same time, I’m not sure what would be appropriate to ask of them for help, so we’ll need to sit down and work out specifics of what my parents are comfortable with and what our limits/boundaries are. My mom likes to cook and would almost certainly be up for contributing to the frozen meal stockpile.
I think we will have more help available than we realize, it’s just a matter of asking for it.
We’ve briefly talked about a Douala at one point. She seemed indifferent at the time, but it would be worth mentioning again now that it’s becoming more “real”.
At her last check up, the doctor told me to let them know if I notice signs of depression. She’s already taking some mild anti-anxiety mediation from pre-pregnancy, but I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for any changes as situations continue to develop.
Parenting
Admittedly, neither of us have spent much time with in-depth reading up on how to actually raise a kid as opposed to how to initially keep him alive. We’ve discussed some generalities with each other, but not much else.
Grieving/related
We found out that we’re having a boy, so that rules out the naming possibilities. But I really like the idea about having something to memorialize her mom.
Our plan is to go as soon as we hear that MIL passes. Good call on the Go-Bag, we now have the basics packed, so we’ll only need a handful of things to add when we need to go. Both of our managers are aware of the situation and we’re already clear to leave at a moment’s notice. We will each have three days of bereavement leave as well. I’ll be able to be with her for that, though she doesn’t know if she would take additional time off and whether she would stay with FIL for longer.
My default reaction does tend to be on the more on the side of “how can I fix it or make it better?” It definitely takes deliberate effort for me to say “Yeah, that sucks” and suppress the feeling that I need to do something, but I’ll keep at it!
Self-Care
Good points! I do have some family and friends that I can vent to when I need to. Physically, playing soccer was pretty much the only thing I did to keep in shape, so I’ll need to make an effort to do something above what my wife and I do together in order to maintain a similar level of physical activity. I get pretty antsy if I don’t get some form of exercise for an extended period of time. In contrast to physical activity, I also enjoy video games and books to clear my head.
little_brown_dog: I laughed when I read your chocolate story, I already had a pretty similar experience. We were at the store and she spotted some fancy chocolate and went “chooocolate” (in the style of Homer’s “Dooonuts”). I blurted out that we had some at home, to which she stopped, turned, locked eye contact with me and said “I want THIS chocolate” followed by the ever-so-slight eyebrow raise.
We got the chocolate.